e to the sheds to
seek for them, nothing but death met his eye on all sides. Some in their
stalls, some in the open fields, some, like their masters, beside the
stream, lay the poor beasts all stone dead.

It seemed as if the scourge had fallen with peculiar virulence upon this
little hamlet, in the warm cup-like hollow where it lay, and had smitten
it root and branch. Possibly the waters of the stream had been poisoned
higher up, and the deadly malaria had reached it in that way; possibly
some condition of the atmosphere predisposed living things to take the
infection. But be the cause what it might, there was no gainsaying the
fact. Not a living or breathing thing remained in the hamlet; and little
as Raymond knew it, such wholesale destruction was only too common
throughout the length and breadth of England. But such a revelation
coming upon him suddenly, brought before his very eyes when he had come
with the desire to help and tend the living, filled him with an awe that
was almost terror, although the terror was not for himself. Personally
he had no fear; he had given himself to this work, and he would hold to
it be the result what it might. But the thought of the scourge sweeping
down upon a peaceful hamlet, and carrying off in a few short days every
breathing thing within its limits, was indeed both terrible and pitiful.
He could picture only too vividly the terror, the anguish, the agony of
the poor helpless people, and longed, not to escape from such scenes,
but rather to go forward to other places ere the work of destruction had
been accomplished, and be with the sick when the last call came. If he
had been but two days earlier in coming forward, might he not have been
in time to do a work of mercy and charity even here?

But it was useless musing thus. To act, and not to think, was now the
order of the day. He went slowly out from the yard they had last
visited, his face as pale as death, but full of courage and high purpose.

"There is nothing living here," he said, as he reached the Father, who
had not left the side of the dead. "We have been into all the houses, we
have looked everywhere, but there is nothing but dead corpses: man and
beast have perished alike. Nothing that breathes is left alive."

The Father looked round upon the scene of smiling desolation -- the
sunny harvest fields, the laughing brook, the broad meadows -- and the
ghastly rows of plague-stricken corpses at his feet, and a stern, sad